Experimental Determination of Irreversible Entropy Production in out-of-Equilibrium Mesoscopic Quantum Systems

By making use of a recently proposed framework for the inference of thermodynamic irreversibility in bosonic quantum systems, we experimentally measure and characterize the entropy production rates in the nonequilibrium steady state of two different physical systems-a micromechanical resonator and a Bose-Einstein condensate-each coupled to a high finesse cavity and hence also subject to optical loss. Key features of our setups, such as the cooling of the mechanical resonator and signatures of a structural quantum phase transition in the condensate, are reflected in the entropy production rates. Our work demonstrates the possibility to explore irreversibility in driven mesoscopic quantum systems and paves the way to a systematic experimental assessment of entropy production beyond the microscopic limit.

Cavity optomechanics of levitated nanodumbbells: nonequilibrium phases and self-assembly

Levitated nanospheres in optical cavities open a novel route to study many-body systems out of solution and highly isolated from the environment. We show that properly tuned optical parameters allow for the study of the nonequilibrium dynamics of composite nanoparticles with nonisotropic optical friction. We find optically induced ordering and nematic transitions with nonequilibrium analogs to liquid crystal phases for ensembles of dimers.

Large quantum superpositions and interference of massive nanometer-sized objects

We propose a method to prepare and verify spatial quantum superpositions of a nanometer-sized object separated by distances of the order of its size. This method provides unprecedented bounds for objective collapse models of the wave function by merging techniques and insights from cavity quantum optomechanics and matter-wave interferometry. An analysis and simulation of the experiment is performed taking into account standard sources of decoherence. We provide an operational parameter regime using present-day and planned technology.

Experimental observation of four-photon entangled Dicke state with high fidelity

We present the experimental observation of the symmetric four-photon entangled Dicke state with two excitations |D_{4};{(2)}. A simple experimental setup allowed quantum state tomography yielding a fidelity as high as 0.844+/-0.008. We study the entanglement persistency of the state using novel witness operators and focus on the demonstration of a remarkable property: depending on the orientation of a measurement on one photon, the remaining three photons are projected into both inequivalent classes of genuine tripartite entanglement, the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger and W class. Furthermore, we discuss possible applications of |D_{4};{(2)} in quantum communication.